HDX with Dante Via

[JCBigler]

Originally Posted by Artysan

Actually, Eric, that opinion is not factual. The marketplace is just selling a lot of hot air for those of us who have large production needs. Each HDX connector is 32IO. That’s a given and you’ll notice nobody makes anything with fewer than two of them anymore. Focusrite, however, sells boxes with two HDX (64 IO) and Dante (32 IO). WHY?!?!?! What are they thinking? Adding a D64R, as they suggest, takes that MADI port to give Dante’s full, NORMAL capacity. So, you now have 64 Dante into 64 HDX, with no available MADI port and a paltry 16 local analog IO. That just doesn’t cut it.

Because both of the MiniDigilink connectors on the Red interfaces are PRIMARY connectors. You can't attach an expansion module to them the way you can an HD I/O. You connect both of the Primary DigiLink connectors on the Red interfaces to both of the Digilink connectors on an HD Native box or HDX card to get 64 channels into Protools from a single box.

You can route the 16 analog inputs as well as 16 ADAT inputs (at 48k, or 8 at 96k) to Protools through the Digilink connectors, and then ALSO route 32 channels of additional inputs from Dante through the Second Digilink connector. To give you 64 channels of I/O at 48k, or 56 at 96k (actually, it would be 58 if you route the two-S/PDIF inputs also).

In Protools the Red interface appears as Four 16 channel HD I/O units if you have both Digilink connectors connected to your HDN or HDX card. They come up as HD I/O A, B, C, or D.

You can grab any inputs on the Dante network, or use a D64R and an HD32R to connect 64 channels of MADI and convert them to Dante to input into Protools.

If you don't need the analog/ADAT I/O on the Red interface, you can route it's internal 32 channels of Dante to it's first Digilink port, and then connect an HD32R to the second Digilink port of the HDN or HDX card for another 32 channels of Dante.

There are ways to do what you want.

But you aren't going to get 32 channels of analog I/O, as well as 64 channels of Dante, PLUS 64 channels of MADI at the same time, unless you have an HDX 3 set up.